One of the challenges in remotely monitoring someone's sobriety with a mobile breathalyzer is being able to say with certainty that the person being monitored was the same person taking a given breath test. Some current state of the art devices use a digital imager to take a photograph of the user as they blow into the device, and also rely on breath temperature and pressure sensors to determine if an air source other than the user's breath is being used. These devices were described in U.S. application Ser. No. 13/357,494 (which is now U.S. Pat. No. 8,707,758, to Keays), U.S. application Ser. No. 13/274,553, and U.S. application Ser. No. 12/882,323 (which is now U.S. Pat. No. 8,381,573, to Keays), the entire contents and disclosures of which are herein incorporated by reference. This works well, however, the use of a digital imager presents several issues that are less than desirable. First, because the imager is typically close to the user's face when they blow into the device, a wide-angle lens is used to capture an image of the whole face. This results in an image with a “fish eye” effect, making user hard to recognize. Second, the digital image is sent with the test report. The smallest image that is practical to use is a 320×240 jpeg image. The maximum size of these images is roughly 20 Kbytes and is by far the largest piece of data contained in the breath test. The method outlined herein provides a means by which a user can be positively identified without the need for a digital image.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a method and system of providing supervisory monitoring of sobriety that is discrete, portable, tamper-proof, effective, and including bioresistive-fingerprint identification, and that can automatically alert a monitoring station of the need for attention and possible corrective or medical action by such a supervisory sober buddy or sober companion on an on-call basis. The present invention meets these and other needs.